Concrete and other pavement used for paving roadways, aircraft landing strips, building floors, or similar surfaces will experience expansion and contraction as the result of changes in temperature. For this reason expansion joints are periodically located between concrete slabs during the paving process to provide room for expansion and contraction of the concrete slabs. Placement of expansion joints between concrete slabs greatly reduces cracking and buckling of the concrete when the concrete is exposed to extreme deviations of temperature.
Elastomeric sealants and filler materials are often used in concrete expansion joints to prevent water, dirt, and other elements from filling the expansion joints and causing damage to the concrete slabs. Additionally, filler material in the expansion joints provides a concrete surface void of deep grooves. Some of the sealants and filler materials typically used in the industry include rubberized asphalt, coal tar extended polysulfide, polyurethane polymers, rubberized polyvinyl chloride, silicone and the like. The flexible sealants and filler materials are somewhat elastic and may be compressed with expansion of the concrete slabs into the expansion joint and stretched with contraction of the concrete slabs from the expansion joint.
Filler material within an expansion joint will begin to wear and break down after a period of time. Wear of the filler material may be caused by a variety of factors including thermal expansion and contraction, exposure to the elements, spillage of fuel and other solvents upon the expansion joint, etc. Significant and substantial wear of the filler material will require that the filler material be removed from the expansion joint and replaced with new filler material in order for the filler material to perform its desired function of protecting the concrete slabs
A primary method of removing filler material from concrete joints under the prior art is for a human worker to take a bladed knife or concrete saw to the expansion joint and carve the filler material from the joint. Of course, this method of removing filler material from the expansion joint is both time consuming and expensive in terms of man-hours. Therefore, some prior art inventions have developed mechanical devices that may be attached to tractors or similar industrial machines for carving filler material from expansion joints. Problems with these prior art devices exist because the devices been difficult to mount to a tractor or similar industrial machine, and have not been capable of universal mounting to various machines. Many prior art devices have required extensive changes to the machines carrying the device such as drilling holes or welding parts to the machine. Furthermore, prior art devices have included a large number of parts, making the devices expensive and complicated to build. Altogether, these prior art devices have been inefficient to use when considering mounting of the device to a tractor or similar machine, cost and difficulty of constructing the device, and overall ability of the device to remove filler material from concrete joints.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device that may be quickly and easily assembled and mounted, and universally attached to tractors, front end loaders or similar industrial machines with buckets for carving filler material from expansion joints. It is another object of the invention to provide a device that may be mounted to a machine with little or no modification of the machine required. It is another object of the invention to provide a device for carving filler material from expansion joints that is relatively simple with few parts to be manufactured and assembled.